Turkey to begin joint air strikes with US against ISIL soon, envoy says

Ambassador Brett McGurk, US deputy special representative for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, also ruled out the suggestion that Turkey is using its fight against ISIL as a cover to hit Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) targets inside Turkey and in northern Iraq. "...The government of Turkey is very eager to begin air strikes against Daesh," McGurk -- using an Arabic acronym for ISIL -- said in an interview with Turkish daily Hürriyet, according to a transcript of the interview published late on Thursday on the US State Department's website. "They would be doing them with us now; however, we have to work out military-to-military the arrangements for doing that. We have a team of our own military professionals here in Turkey now that is working with the Turkish military to work out the arrangements and the mechanisms for doing it." The US military began air strikes from İncirlik air base in southern Turkey on Wednesday, weeks after Turkey and the US reached a key deal under which Ankara agreed to allow a US-led coalition against ISIL to use its air bases in late July. The deal, which came after several months of reluctance by Ankara to open up its bases to air strikes against ISIL, was hailed by Washington as a "game changer." "The only reason that Turkey is not doing air strikes against Daesh is because we are in the final stages of working out the arrangements by which they will do that within our coalition. It's called an air tasking order. It's very complicated, it's military-to-military, and those arrangements are being finalized now," he said, adding that "joint flight operations will start fairly soon." "So the notion that Turkey has been attacking the PKK and not Daesh is more an issue about working out the arrangements by which Turkey will be striking Daesh, than anything having to do with our agreement with them," the US representative said. Turkey launched what it calls a two-pronged war against ISIL and the terrorist PKK in late July following attacks on security forces from both groups. The fact that an overwhelming majority of the air strikes have been against PKK targets so far has led to criticism that Turkey is using the fight against ISIL as an excuse to launch attacks on the PKK and to demonize a pro-Kurdish political party whose strong showing in a June 7 parliamentary election was a key factor that caused the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) to lose its parliamentary majority for the first time in 2002. McGurk defended Turkish operations against the PKK, saying that international media coverage of the Turkish campaign has left out "the fact that the PKK now has been launching attacks inside Turkey almost every day." "That really has to stop, and that was the trigger for this. Again, if the PKK did not launch attacks inside Turkey, Turkey would not be launching retaliatory attacks against the PKK," he said. McGurk, however, admitted that there was some "concern" when the Turkish military launched its first air strikes against the PKK on July 24, apparently confirming reports that the Turkish side had notified the US of its campaign at the last minute. "And there was some anxiety -- that's the wrong word -- was some concern, I think, within our side in the initial hours simply because there were a lot of airplanes in the sky," he said. "There's a lot going on. These are coalition operations, and we have to make sure that everything is coordinated. So there's issues of air flight safety." Asked whether the Turkish air strikes against the PKK hinder US cooperation with the Syrian Kurdish groups -- the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing the People's Protection Units (YPG) -- which have emerged as one of the most effective ground forces against ISIL, McGurk reiterated the US position that although the PKK is a terrorist organization, the PYD is not considered to be one. "The PYD and the YPG within Syria has been very effective against Daesh. We obviously are helping in terms of helping air strikes to weaken Daesh in these areas. And again, I want to be very clear to your readers: Our mission from the president is to degrade and ultimately defeat Daesh. And so when groups on the ground are fighting Daesh and they're groups that we can work with, we will work with them. So we have been helping to enable these very effective operations by the Syrian Kurds, and also by a number of Arab and Christian groups in these areas that have also organized themselves and armed themselves to fight Daesh," he said. Turkey considers the PYD and the YPG as the Syrian wing of the PKK and is concerned about US cooperation with them in the course of the fight against ISIL, according to Today's Zaman .

Asked if there could be cooperation between Turkey and the Syrian Kurds, McGurk said, "I would leave it to the government of Turkey, but it's certainly our view that groups that are fighting Daesh on the ground and the groups that have a general moderate outlook for the post-Daesh future in Syria, the more cooperation the better."